I already knew plenty of things about this game before starting it. In the past few years, I've watched a bit of SM64 content on YouTube, especially speedruns...
It's unfortunate that I didn't go in Mario 64 completely blind, but hey, doesn't mean I didn't have fun!
And since the only speedruns I've watched are any%, I was still very unfamiliar with most of the levels.

I played an unofficial PC port of the game called "Super Mario 64 Plus"
The best additions of this port are the improved movements with Mario, and free camera control.

I've seen everyone and their mother complain about the game's controls, and how poorly they have aged. I guess this port did a wonderful job fixing the controls, because they didn't bother me at any point 👍

I love how fluid the movements are compared to Mario Galaxy, which is the only other 3D Mario game I've played. The Side Somersault especially is so much better. I often found myself using this move into wall jump to reach really high places. These moves are very flexible & satisfying to use.

Yes. I threw the baby penguin in the void after his mama gave me the Star 😈 evil laugh

"File Select", "Inside Peach's Castle" and "Dire Dire Docks" are my 3 favorite pieces of music in the game. It's just so good, I'm not surprised Mario 64's soundtrack has become so iconic!
I like how peaceful the exterior of the Castle is. No music, just the sound of waterfalls, birds & grasshoppers. Very calming ❤

For a game released in 1996, there were very interesting ideas in the level-design:
- The fact that they were already messing with the gravity, way before Sunshine & Galaxy (the tall pillars in Shifting Sand Land)
- In Tiny-Huge Island, the way you teleport to a shrunken version of the level gives the illusion that Mario shrinks after entering the green pipes. It was pretty clever.
- It's cool how some level's layouts change depending on how you enter the paintings! Whether it's Wet-Dry World with the water, or Tick Tock Clock with the pendulum's speed.

This only occured to me after finishing the game, but that's funny how tiny the Worlds are. And what's great is that they all seem to be packed with content. There isn't any wasted space in any of the levels.
I also like how after unlocking the wing cap, vanish cap & metal cap, new stars become accessible in every level. It gave a satisfying feeling of progression.

After obtaining the 120 stars, you can meet Yoshi on the castle's roof and receive a sweet message from the developers. This was such a cool reward for finishing the game.
I don't know if I would have enjoyed the game as much as I did if I played it vanilla. This PC port made the adventure really enjoyable!

To end this review, I felt like ranking each World from most to least favorite:
1) Wet-Dry World
2) Hazy Maze Cave
3) Lethal Lava Land
4) Jolly Roger Bay
5) Big Boo's Haunt
6) Snowman's Land
7) Cool Cool Mountain
8) Tick Tock Clock
9) Dire Dire Docks
10) Tall Tall Mountain
11) Shifting Sand Land
12) Whomp's Fortress
13) Bob-Omb Battlefield
14) Tiny-Huge Island
15) Rainbow Ride

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on April 28th & finished on May 1st 2024]
Playtime: 16 hours
100% Completion

This is a game where a bunch of talented developers were stuck in the same room for two years who were never told "no." Instead, they told each other "sure, bro."

Want to make a bunch of new mechanics that are both overcentralizing and near-irrelevant? Sure, bro.

Want to make a 30-60 minute long tutorial you can only skip by winning a race you only can win if you already know how to play the game somehow? Sure, bro.
(Don't even get me started on how the tutorial was before the first patch, the requirements to skip the tutorial were hidden AND you had to clear a max-level race. Actually evil.)

Want to generally nerf items while cranking the knockback to unfathomable degrees which creates scenarios where you can get knocked out of a top position and no item is reasonably strong enough to get you back where you were? Sure, bro.

Want to make items actively feel bad to get because the Ring system is so encouraged while also not letting you use Rings with an item in hand? Sure, bro.

Want to make like 200 tracks but they all have narrow tracks and very tight turns? Sure, bro. Also want to make any uphill slope kill your speed and make you have to STOP IN PLACE to Spin Dash upward VERY SLOWLY? Sure, bro.

Want to make a single player mode where the rubberbanding is overtuned (even after a near launch day nerf, mind you), the AIs will target you even when you're near dead-last, and the Rival explicitly cheats and will steal victories from you? Sure, bro.

Want to make an unlock system like Kirby Air Ride but make a bunch of requirements hard, cryptic, and/or straight up unrealistic to achieve unless you dedicate literal months of game time? Suuuuure, bro.

Despite its many, MANY problems, the game is still fun and I can see a version of this game where the new additions compliment base SRB2K rather than detract. The Rings being the omnipresent, overbearing problem is an issue I don't see being fixed, though. The devs seem really proud of their Ring system even if it kills the Kart aspect by making items less used/encouraged. I can always hope, though.

tl;dr Imagine if Mario Kart was mixed with F-Zero but all the worst parts of F-Zero were mixed in with a dash of unique jank and bad decisions. Enjoyable for kart-racer tryhards, completionists, and masochists, and nobody else.

jesus christ activision sure knows how to make tense games for the 2600. On average, this game is like 6-7 seconds long, which sounds pathetic on paper but dear lord getting that time down is an absolute struggle.

So here's why this game is kinda nuts: there's a tachometer at the bottom of your screen. If it goes past 3/4ths of your screen at any time, you blow up and die instantaneously. Pushing the button on the controller is your gas and your gas moves the meter up. Pushing down the left direction on the joystick puts you in a clutch state where the tachometer is so sensitive to gas that pretty much holding both the button and left at the same time at any point is a death sentence. Releasing left after pressing it down brings you up a gear, where you go faster with a slower tachometer. Basically you need to do as close to frame-perfect button presses and joystick inputs/releases as you feasibly can, and if you do it right, you get a good time, and if you do it even slightly wrong you either die in a horrific car explosion or get a shit time that brings great dishonor to your drag racing career. The manual's challenge of getting under 6 seconds to join the World Class Dragster Club is no simple task either. Considering the frame-perfect theoretical perfect time is 5.57, there's a shockingly small margin of error to join that prestigious, 40-years-defunct club (and if you say you've gotten a 5.51 before, you are a liar!). It took me dozens upon dozens of attempts to be able to just barely squeeze out a 5.94 that I swear to god felt like luck as I did the same thing I usually did for a good run, I just must have happened to have pressed the buttons at a more optimal time. Though I guess since the game is only 6 seconds long on a good run those dozens of attempts was still only like 20-30 minutes of grind. I felt like I spent more time waiting for the starting countdown to finish (or prematurely exploding by failing to properly feather the gas during the countdown as a way to get a good start) than actually racing, which is kinda eh but it is what it is.

It's certainly a deep and thought-out game that has a high skill ceiling to work up towards for sure. With how much frame-perfection is emphasized here, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a game to sew the seeds of speedrunning or just general high-level gamer tech to the still-blossoming Atari gamer crowd. But it does mean that this game is definitely geared towards that certain type of player, so if you aren't into personal time attack grinds there's pretty much less game time for you in this game than the time it took you to read this whole ramble in the first place. Fascinating!

when i'm not blatantly baiting i'm happy to let people have their opinions, but man, when are we going to stop equating "addictive" with "interesting game design"? someone of you roguelike fans should try pachinko machines, the addictive randomized endless gameplay will surely blow your minds and rocket to the top of your topsters

i should clarify: i have nothing against gambling games. i gambled away all of my money in yakuza. and this is barely a gambling game! my problem here is moreso with the current state of the indie roguelike being that every game is mashed with the same repetitive trendiest tricks to make le epic addictive gameplay and heralded as the newest masterpiece on the block. it ain't exciting. oh well. it's only a video game, at the end of the day

So I made a mistake. After reviewing The Kung Fu, I thought the next game was Victory Run and I proceeded to play and review that game last night. Turns out I was wrong, this was meant to be the next game so that was a mistake of mine. So this is certainly an odd one.

This game stars two actual Japanese comedians and I can't really say I'm familiar with them like at all but they are the stars of this game and I guess it makes sense, you gotta get some appeal to your console.

To my surprise this game is like a crude take on the first Wonder Boy game. It was made by Hudson Soft who would do the Adventure Island games. This game has a more arcadey feel due to it being based off that game. Now I have to confess I don't like the original Wonder Boy, I just find it obnoxious to play. But this game is actually decent.

First of all it was made easier since now your health bar is actually a health bar and not just a timer you need to keep up. You also got a few different combat actions but they don't have the best hitboxes unfortunately. The game's level design doesn't feel as unfair but it does have it's issues.

The game isn't perfect though as it starts to get too repetitive after a while and sometimes the enemy placement can be placed poorly in my opinion. There's also these keys you can find in the 3rd level of each field and if you don't get them you can't be the last level in the field and it'll take you back to that third level to get it. It doesn't help that the hitboxes you need to hit for platforms or items to show can be pretty small. Bosses are also not too hard if you're at full health and they're all the same which is lame.

The graphics are fairly basic as they probably focused more on the bigger sprites with a lot of personality in them. The music can be good but there's one song when you're in the clouds that I can't stand. Otherwise it's decent stuff. Also when the game was brought here, graphics had to be reworked because no one here would have knew who these two were.

I was surprised that this was a decent time. I always hear a lot of hate for this one but it's not that bad. I even liked it more then Wonder Boy 1 itself. Like I said it has issues and I'm not gonna ignore that but you could do worse and it's probably more entertaining for the people who know who these guys are. There's really no harm in playing either version but just don't go in expecting anything amazing.

This game is fascinating in the fact it feels not even close to being a finished product. What happened here? This came out in 1994 and this is what they had to release? The premise is interesting and there could be a decent game here but the mechanics and level design aren’t given much thought or any at all. It’s like they had ideas but so much of the game is empty or pointless filler. There’s a whole damn level that’s just you falling into pits. The game is also short, taking less than an hour to beat.

I can’t even compliment the presentation as the game graphics are alright, there’s barely any cutscenes and zero voice acting in them, the music is only CD quality in the non gameplay parts and the music in the actual game is atrocious. It doesn’t even run well, like it’s shockingly horrible performance wise. This might be the worst running game I’ve seen on the system. I can’t even tell if this is a problem with emulation. I just now tried playing Bomberman 94 and that didn’t have any issues with the audio or anything. I’m just baffled.

There’s not really much to say, I’d argue it might be worth playing just so you can witness how unfinished it is. Even by the end it does nothing to impress with the final room being two enemies with horrible AI. Mechanics aren’t fleshed out at all and the whole experience just feels so nothing. I wanted to enjoy it especially since the cover art is nice, but this just isn’t it. Gainax could have done much better than this and all I can do is just wonder what could have been.

I only planned to play this game for a few minutes to check it out. I ended up spending the evening completing the whole thing.

You play as a dark lord whose castle is under attack by some annoying heroes. It is sort of like tower defense, except you summon creatures that move around the map and traps to attack the heroes. You gain experience from killing heroes and unlock new creatures and traps to summon.

There is quite a bit of variety in the hero powers, although the summoned creatures have less attack variety.

The game is real chill and I keep going back to listen to the soundtrack. First time in a long time that game music got stuck in my head.

The game has a cool vibe to it. I like the spatial/spacecraft aesthetics, and the racers all have flamboyant costumes & haircuts 😄
I knew Captain Falcon for so long because he has always been part of every Smash game, so it was nice to finally play his own series after all this time!

The driving mechanics were so special. The spacecrafts are extremely sensitive when you turn, and they all feel really floaty.
I tried a lot of different ones during the first hour, but I eventually stuck to the Astro Robin. This vehicle had great acceleration and top speed, really satisfying & noob-friendly vehicle.

I didn't expect F-Zero GX to be so challenging. The game seems to have a high skill ceiling, and it made ending up in 1st place all the more rewarding.
It's not simple to avoid hitting the walls, and you can easyly fall into the void because you went too fast, or because another racer pushed you into it. And you have to use your boost carefully, because using too much of it can cause your vehicle to overheat.

There were several well designed tracks. I liked the circuit "Port Town - Long Pipe" where you're driving through a tube most of the race while avoiding the pillars in the way. Casino Palace and Cosmo Terminal were also really cool.

The TV interviews always crack me up for some reason. It's so goofy and cliché but in a good way.

I had enough of the game after 5 hours. I don't really have any criticism really, it just didn't manage to grab me for very long. Maybe I'm just not a huge fan of racing games.

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on January 6th & stopped on January 12th 2024]
Playtime: 5 hours
I stopped after winning the Diamond Cup.

I do feel insecure when I play an absolute classic and I'm not completely enamoured by it. A lot of my love for Mario comes from Galaxy onward. I do really like the original Super Mario Bros. and I love playing all the styles in Mario Maker but SMB3, Super Mario 64 and now Super Mario World don't fill me with the adoration they probably deserve. As dramatic as all that sounds, I still did enjoy the game. It is very fun. The level design is great and the influence it has had on gaming is undeniable. It is remarkable how many secrets there are in the level. There are so many secret exits to levels that in some ways, I found exhausting but it does add a lot of depth to it. I did find myself getting frustrated with the game which I can admit was a skill issue. I never fully grasped the movement options with the cape. It doesn't control like Mario Maker which was hard to get used to. I tried not to use save states but there definitely were some of the later levels that I gave into the temptation. The platforming is great though and having some challenge is nice after coming from Wonder. I wish I could appreciate it more but I can still see it is a fantastic game.

No More Expectations

Alright, third game I've played from the twisted mind of Suda51. You know, I'm starting to know why people are obsessed over him and his games. It's just "him", he's like Kojima's younger and unhinged brother (in a good way though). Just replace cinema references with geek culture references and there you have the big Suda51 energy, at least in No More Heroes. I couldn't really start this review without talking about it's mastermind, it's plastered everywhere and the "Punk" energy of professionally not giving much of a fuck and surpass any realistic expectations are without a doubt present in this game. Very authentic, to say the least.

No More Heroes is in it's very soul a hack and slash game. We take the control of an "Otaku", which is the term equivalent to nerd in Japan. Travis Touchdown is our protagonist, and our mission is to scale up in the rankings. The Assasins Association is our ticket to get to the top of the world of killers. But what does Travis search for really? What is our objective? Money, fame ...women? All of them? Won't answer that, it's a secret. But what do you really expect at the end, something deep? Or plain stupid fun? Both? You can interpret this game layers and layers of complexity the way you see fit.

There are two types of gameplay. The main one, which is the action focused hack and slash formula and the other one, taking a secondary role in the grand scheme of things is the open world in the same vein of any GTA game. The open world is needed to earn money to enter the next big fight and scale the aforementioned ranking. We get money by making odd jobs through the city of Santa Destroy (yeah, that's the city's name and is specially weird knowing I'm playing this game in particular after christmas). Law mowing, collect coconuts, scorpions among others activities. Alongside it there are plenty of shops to spend our money in, mostly in things that will help us on battles. These part-time jobs are in fact minigames in disguise that made an extensive use of the Wiimote, but as you may know I played this on PC and the novelty wears off a little. Fun Fact: The PC port was so lazily done Switch prompts can still be seen. A tutorial screen that is meant to teach how to play a minigame, has still a joy-con graphic attached to it. And you can't play this game with a keyboard either, which sucks.

In a way, No More Heroes makes me appreciate it's structure around what can you expect climbing up the ladders to the top. It's a constant reminder of your position or how close you're to the objective itself. I started to feel fatigue by the 7th boss or so, it gets repetitive doing the same odd jobs and earning money to then kill the next ranked assasin. Won't lie it was compelling at first, but it's really just superficail level stuff at the end of the day. Serves as a good rest after every bossfight, which can be lengthy and quite intense.

Combat is simple and mashy, but visually stimulating. There are no combo mechanics of any kind and the it's easily exploitable depending how much you love pressing buttons. Enemies explode in red, they bleed like their life depends on it while screaming like damn Looney Tunes characters. It's raw fun, totally in your face and is not afraid to show it's true colors. But as much as something raw is natural, nature doesn't forgive and is selective. What do I mean with this? If you can't swallow the jank that plagues this game's combat, you'll ended up like me hating some aspects of it.

What else is aunthentic? Travis Touchdown, main character. He's a loser, it's cool on it's own way and it is not afraid to show it. He knows is the protagonist of the story, and wants to give a good show to it's consumers. Has most of the attributes that defines a main character in an action game, it is a really good damn protagonist. Characters in general have no shame of being themselves in this game, they can be the most outrageous and wacky people alive as professional assasins and follows Suda51's tradition of making characters that are considered misfits by society shine the best they can, in a sadly short runtime before they get eliminated. The Bosses are very charming.

Just don't take it seriously, or you will lose. I'm not joking, No More Heroes is like going to the bathroom and take it all out. Won't be pretty, but it's authentic and natural at the of the day. I really didn't vibe with how it aimless it was, between being self-aware parodies of the media, or a wanting to tell an story in itself. Sometimes it even breaks most of those rules stablished before in seemingly "important" moments, just for comedic effects and laughs. Look, I don't know if the bitter one here or not but it didn't do much for me honestly it all felt pointless by the end. Was that really the meaning of it? You either love it, don't understand it or hate it. Thing is, I love shit like this. Dumb ass games that don't take themselves seriously are up my alley, as long as they've a good balance of course.

Love for what it stands for: "Punk". Don't play by the rules and do whatever you want. Even though I don't think Suda51 objectively makes "good" games that really appeal to the largest demographic group (doesn't need to either), I do feel he pour his heart out on each of his projects and wants to set a precedent on the industry as a whole. I just don't think is a good game in a otherwise very stylized and unique adventure. Or probably didn't fell into as much as the rest did.

Galerians almost immediately starts with you, Rion, in a "Short" state where you can kill any enemy in one hit by just getting near them and also where your health dips by the second. there are some lore documents that could help you figure out what to do, but you know you're playing a survival horror, famous for it's limited resources, so this is definitely scripted right? i'm not gonna waste any resources this early into the game. this meant that 4 out the 4 people (including me) who have recently played it died in this beginning sequence without ever saving, having to restart it's short 3 minute sequence all over again until you figure out the solution. a powerful way to set the stage i think.

Galerians' industrial noise pipe banging, steel ball clacking, radiator recording, air conditioner infused soundtrack will perpetually aggrieve you all the way to the end (this is a good thing). while not really a scary game, it doesn't actually feature any jumpscares and some places, while creepy, are not so gross or otherwordly to inspire any sense of disgust, it does invoke a very specific sense of dread, of something wrong. the hospital features no windows and feels much more like a research facility, your house seems to be stuck in time, the standard hotel still runs a boiler room with terrible piping even though the city seems to be very well developed. "it is what it is", is probably what the citizens of this megalopolis think to themselves. and Rion, being a kid with a mission and no real agency, has no time to think about that. but the player certainly has.

also Babylon Hotel. this game is not very subtle in any of it's themes or imagery (last boss is straight up an H.R. Gieger painting), but this stage. this stage could have it's own entire game made around it (actually now that i think about it someone kinda did it's called hotel dusk play it). not that I do not enjoy the rest of Galerians' stages, the fact that it cut out it's survival horror narrative in several stages is very cool!! but the hotel goes a step beyond. here you have several characters with their own stories and developments and all of them with voiced cutscenes (it's no wonder the hotel is disc 2 by itself). while all of these characters are just a means for Rion to progress the story, most if not all of them have nothing to do with him or each other even. they're living their own feverish personal dramas, each one with their own ambitions, be them good or bad. it paints the picture of a horrible world, one that seems to be crumbling and finding it's denizens progressively more unhinged. and Rion, who has been mostly on a (justified) murderous rampage, seems like the most normal one there. he's just a kid after all, what can he do to emotionally reach these adults even if he has psychic murder powers?

Galerians' ambitious cinematic take on the survival horror genre created a very very short game chock-full of very cool FMVs which makes me think that the fact that it ended up getting a CGI-based OVA retelling of the game's story was it's only logical conclusion (it also has a PS2 sequel that seems to change the vibe completely, looks pretty fun!). i'm gonna watch it someday, but until then, i'm still very glad games like this exist and that people were able to make them in the first place

really enjoyed this! i've been a massive kaiju fan pretty much my entire life and NGE means the world to me so when jacob geller talked about this game i knew i had to check it out. set pieces are beautiful (and evangelion inspired) and the whole aesthetic of the game is just so cool. only downside was how much time i spent wandering around the level looking for the objectives. taking cool pictures is so much fun and then once i've taken like 50 i have to spend another 15 minutes wandering around aimlessly :(. this might just be a me thing tho cause im not the most observant person and also have literally never played a photography game before, though i will have to check some more out after this one.

Servicable remake but it misses the mark for me. The art style was one of the most striking aspects of the original & I don't think it was captured well. While character & environmental designs are faithful, they lack the distinct style of the SNES version which has a huge impact on the overall atmosphere of the game. The original was always on the easy side but with the addition of team attacks & the new AOE effect on perfectly timed hit, it's made even easier making battles less engaging. The CGI cutscenes are fun to witness but are brought down by the lack of SFX & the rare in-game cutscenes feel shoddy with the bizzare font choice. The new small boss intros are a cool addition but they also draw attention to the low poly enemy models & while that on its own isn't enough to bother me, it just makes me wish they waited for better hardware to give the game a more drastic overhaul instead of sending it out on the already ancient switch with its extremely dated hardware. Feels like a wasted oppurtunity for a game as celebrated as this. Atleast the new music is genuinely great & easily the highlight.

It was nice to go through SMRPG with a different lense but overall it feels like an inferior way to experience the game.